On Thu, May 30, 2002 08:59:50AM -0700, Marshall Rose wrote:
My druthers would be to have an IETF policy explicitly saying
that the first choice is to use unencumbered technology if it
can be made to work, second choice is encumbered but
royalty-free technology, and last choice is "fair and reasonable
licence terms" (or whatever the equivalent correct legal wording
might be for that last).
and if one solution is 120% better technically than another, but has
a RAND license associated with it? What if it's 170% better?
working groups make trade-offs all the time between simplicity,
functionality, and so on. licensing is another cost. given the amount
of traffic on this topic, it appears that licensing is a very heavy
cost. this may provide an answer to your question...
Given the content of the traffic on this topic, there is a range of
opinions about how heavy a cost it is -- which is what I wanted to bring
out.
We can, if we like, declare that all standards must be unencumbered, but
by doing so we'll just make the IETF less relevant. That ideal is left
over from the days when everyone was working for the common good -- in
some working groups it's wrong, and in others hard to apply. Right now
there is no explicit guidance for working groups. Smart ones figure out
creative solutions on their own. I'd like to see some prose added to
the working group guidelines, not to lay out explicit rules, but to give
groups a framework for making decisions about standards and intellectual
property in the modern world.
..Scott